June is Pride Month and IAWF is excited to share our next panel, “Allied In Pride.” Dr. Foojan Zeine will moderate a discussion featuring Sepi Shyne, Sara Farizan, and Shahrzad Bakhtiari as they discuss embracing one’s identity and being better allies for LGBTQ+ individuals. We invite you to join us Thursday, June 3 at 5:30 PM PST on Zoom, and we look forward to seeing you there!

Moderator – Dr. Foojan Zeine

A member of IAWF BOD, Dr. Foojan Zeine is a Radio & TV host, International Speaker, Psychotherapist, Life Coach, and the Author of Life Reset – The Awareness Integration Path to Create the Life You Want. She has her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology and is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist. Her practice is online as well as in Beverly Hills and San Clemente, California offices. Foojan is the originator and the author for “Awareness Integration'' educational and psychological model, a multi-modality approach and intervention toward minimizing Depression, Anxiety while improving Self Esteem and Self Confidence.  Multiple research on this method has been published in international journals and has been presented at Harvard University. Foojan hosts a live radio and podcast show in KMET 1490AM/ ABC News Radio, as well as co-host a television program in Tapesh TV.  She is a guest speaker in many universities including Harvard, MIT, UCLA & USC. She has been a guest in the Dr. Phil show in CBS, Fox & Voice of America. Foojan is a contributor to YourTango.com, DivorceForce.com, yogajournal.com, Wholelife.com, Men’s Health, Psychology Today, Reader’s Digest, and Huffington Post.

Sepi Shyne

Councilmember Sepi Shyne made history in November 2020 when she was elected to the West Hollywood City Council. She became the first out LGBTQ Iranian elected anywhere globally and locally became the first woman of color elected to West Hollywood’s City Council. Her election also ushered in West Hollywood’s first female-majority City Council. Councilmember Shyne’s priorities include advocating for affordable housing, protecting renters and social service programs, social justice, small business revival, and bringing the people’s voices to City Hall.

Councilmember Shyne received her Bachelor of Science from San Jose State University with a double concentration in Accounting and Management Information Systems and a Minor in Drama with an emphasis in Directing. She received her Juris Doctorate with a specialization certificate in litigation from Golden Gate University School of Law in San Francisco.

As an LGBTQ+ and civil rights leader for more than 20 years, her leadership has helped secure equal rights for all. Before her election to the West Hollywood City Council, Councilmember Shyne served on the City of West Hollywood’s Lesbian and Gay Advisory Board, on the City of West Hollywood’s Business License Commission, and on the Los Angeles County Assessor’s Advisory Council on which she continues to serve. Additionally, she has led many boards and organizations, including the LGBT Bar Association of Los Angeles and as a Board of Governor and Steering Committee leader with the Human Rights Campaign Los Angeles. Councilmember Shyne is a Co-Organizer of WeHo Neighbors Helping Neighbors, a community group created during the pandemic to help get resources to seniors, people with disabilities, and people in immunosuppressed households via social media and volunteer check-in calls. In every board and organization she has led, she has recruited and elevated women and people of color to leadership positions to create more diversity, inclusion, and equity.

Sara Farizan

Sara Farizan's debut novel, If You Could Be Mine, won the Ferro-Grumley Award, the Edmund White Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Children's/Young Adult Literature in 2014, and was named to the American Library Association Rainbow List as one of the year's best LGBT-themed books. Her other novels are Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel, which was again named to the Rainbow List for 2015 and received two starred reviews, and Here to Stay, which Entertainment Weekly called "a powerful YA novel about identity and prejudice."

Shahrzad Bakhtiari

Shahrzad Bakhtiari is an assistant vice president and branch manager of the Huntington Beach Brookhurst Office for U.S. Bank, and has been in the financial services industry for more than thirty years, joining U.S. Bank in 2002.

Fluent in both Farsi and English, Shahrzad is a proud member of the Iranian American community. She has built a network of invaluable connections because of her personal passion to support the disabled, homeless, and LGBTQ+ communities, and currently is a member of U.S. Bank’s Disability and Spectrum Business Resource Groups, and is also on the board of MenAlive, Orange County’s Gay Men’s Chorus.

Shahrzad is a longtime Orange County resident and spends her time outside of work focused on volunteering in the community, using her expertise to advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion of all underrepresented groups.